New German Literature in English Translation

note on Jonah whoosh riff-raff: (bosch) inventory of the world

the word that does not come to pass –
and yet, we do not go into the immanence
of a big-bellied, dark, barely
discernible life, self within self
in the whale’s wide ocean –
it streams, flows
over the eyes

always you waited for a sign
– undying stubbornness
and the whole sky was hung with
luminous creatures, thus did we trickle
the lie into Jonah’s ear
go forth into the world
into the windswept void

Whoosh

rain made its own sea and the sea its own waves, clouds
swelled above the sea’s white surf – bright sounds –
and like dust on the tape track, everything mixed together
the voices, whispering, stand out from yesterday, from the
dead conversations, woven into the moiré of swelling
…sss…welling interferences, wherever the wind goes, whether
it softly surges rushes subsides, lightly lifts, like fluff
hushing with a rustle or into ash grey silence – a hand movement
as if after prolonged illness all simultaneities were to end
all gusts to switch tack, reared up, questions simply to arise

riff-raff: (bosch)

small cohorts bear flags eagerly on through the days up the mountain
riff-raff with the cloven hoof of avarice; while I wait for some
sidetrack or other………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………
with an occasional flattering of the tarps and –
games devoid of emblematic charge and –
sun at my shoulder

inventory of the world

travels? voices? (buzzing wires) – on landing you looked: heavenwards
in flight perhaps you belonged to the inventory of the world, in the child’s eyes.
at first the panorama lies there like a lizard, then suddenly it’s whizzing past
a gradual fading of intensities, dread shimmered in the glass(bobeobi peli guby) you hummed. all we do anyway is animate strange interiors:
gleaming between global vacancies (straw dolls all aflame). but
sucking on melancholy or crowning the kingfisher bird of the year
– is one and the same. like in endless loops, overcast state of emergency:
totally fogged (an email) autumn burns into view – wafts out the cockpit door.